


a wrecking ball with a heart of gold

by easternepiphany



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternepiphany/pseuds/easternepiphany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts slow, a 10pm text message and out the door by 1:30. Then he stays the night because it’s getting cold outside and Britta’s bed is warm. And they don’t spoon or cuddle or anything lame like that. Until they do, until he wakes up with his arm slung across her stomach and her back pressed into his chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a wrecking ball with a heart of gold

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically a companion piece to [Keeping All My Cards Up on the Shelf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/645873). It's basically the other half of the story, although you don't need to read that to read this and vice-versa. The only thing you need to know is that Jeff and Britta get drunk at the post-space simulator party and have sex on Pavel's bunk bed. And that's how it all starts.

It’s weird, when you pretend to be in love with a girl (your friend? your best friend?) to prove a stupid point and then you get drunk and have sex with her and decide to keep doing it. It’s weird because after you spend an entire day kissing her and holding her hand and talking about how you’re going to love her until you die, going back to sitting perpendicular to her at the study table (the table you had sex on) takes a lot of effort. So you propose this: friends with benefits, in secret, no strings or expectations or drama. Because maybe this is the best you’re going to get, but you know it’s the most you’re capable of doing.

\---

“We have cell phones,” she’d said before it happened. So maybe he had some delusion of spending the summer with her, of calling her on a Saturday morning and inviting her to lunch, and they’d eat outside and then go see a movie and go back to his place and make out on the living room floor. He would kiss her, slow and sweet, he would take his time, learn every curve and dip of her body, it wouldn’t be something spiked with adrenaline and fear like last time. It would be different, away from the study group, away from Greendale, no stupid games or secrets to ruin everything. Just two people who enjoy each other’s company. It would be good, good for both of them.  
  
But sometimes you fuck up and sometimes you do stupid things and Jeff knows about all that better than anyone. Taking the non-option was better because there’s nothing scarier than being asked to choose between two women at a school dance. Well, it was better for a few minutes, and then it was worse because when you fuck up, you never think of the consequences, that you’re hurting three different people, that you’re digging yourself deeper and deeper.

He accused her of being guarded and she responded by letting all her guards down at once. He doesn’t realize it until much later, until he’s seen her panting beneath him and soft with sleep and sad but determined not to cry, but the whole thing was such a _Britta Perry_ thing to do; “You think I’m guarded? Well let me show you how _not_ guarded I really am.” He spent the summer debating with himself over whether she meant it or not but decides now that it doesn’t really matter because what’s done is done and he’s moved on and she’s moved on and we’ll all just forget about it, okay?

But then there’s a day when they’re all sitting around the table and Britta hooks her ankle around his which means they’ll be having sex sometime within the next two hours and Annie is looking his way and—okay. Someone somewhere thought they were being funny when this seating arrangement happened because _he’s literally sitting between the two of them_.

Jeff’s not full of himself enough to believe that anyone else in the room is thinking the same thing. He doesn’t delude himself into believing that Annie’s sitting there, pining away for him. But he knows the way she looks at him sometimes because he’s looking at her the same way. The first time he kisses Britta again—the first time it’s real again—he thinks about kissing Annie, about taking the non-option, about how Britta shouldn’t even want to talk to him anymore, let alone kiss him. He compares the two, the way Britta kisses with anger in her mouth even when she’s not angry, the way Annie’s hair is thicker and softer, the way he’s terrified of kissing both of them but in weird, opposite ways.

And Britta’s not stupid. She knows the way he and Annie look at each other and her face screws up sometimes, features settling into a scowl. Those are the days she takes him home and kisses him the roughest, scratches at his skin and leaves marks on his body. He’d point it out, he’d make fun of her, but he knows he’d do the same thing. He imagines himself in her place: if she had kissed Troy or Abed or, hell, even Vaughn after he stripped himself down to bare bones in front of everyone, he would be angry and jealous, too. So when he wakes up in the morning with bite marks on his collarbone, he adjusts his wardrobe accordingly (she knows better, though, not to leave evidence where others can see; the scratches and the bruises are for him and him alone, for him to know exactly who it is he’s fucking every night) and at study group he keeps his eyes firmly ahead of him and doesn’t look to his left nor his right.

\---

“We need,” Jeff says, “a codename.”  
  
Britta shifts, sits up a little bit, holding the sheet against her chest. “What do you mean? Like for your dick? Because I’m not doing that.”  
  
He _tsk_ s and rolls his eyes. “No, you goon. Okay, say that you and I have plans to meet up but Annie asks you to go to the mall or whatever girls do. What are you going to tell her?”  
  
“I’ll tell her I’m busy. Annie doesn’t pry.”  
  
“What about Shirley?”  
  
“Good point,” Britta concedes. “I’m taking that photography class this semester. I can say I have to go to the darkroom.”  
  
“Eh, I guess it’ll work.”  
  
“What about you? What are you going to say?”  
  
“To who?”  
  
She shrugs. “Anyone. Troy. Abed. Oh, also you should probably pretend to go on dates so everyone doesn’t get suspicious.”  
  
“What if I actually have a date?”  
  
She’s quiet for a few seconds and he bites his tongue. They’ve been having sex for a month and he’s barely _spoken_ to another girl outside of Shirley and Annie, let alone dated one. He and Britta said upfront that this whole thing wasn’t exclusive, but, for him at least, it already is.  
  
“Then no excuse needed,” she says kind of softly.  
  
He feels that balance slipping. He’s gotten good at detecting it, even though it’s stupid and unnecessary. Because he knows she hasn’t been dating anyone either. And maybe she knows about his own love life and maybe she doesn’t but despite the fact that they’re both naked in bed, he has to reassure her in some convoluted way because that’s who they are.  
  
“Gwynnifer.”  
  
“Bless you?”  
  
“No, dummy, that could be your code name,” he says. “If we have plans and I’m trying to duck out of study group, I can just say I have a date with Gwynnifer.”  
  
Britta looks at him like he’s crazy. “That’s not even a real name!”  
  
“Neither is Britta, but we call you that anyway.”  
  
She smacks him on the arm and he feigns injury. “Whatever. Just don’t talk about her too much or else the group’s going to want to meet her. Remember what happened with whats-her-face.”  
  
Jeff’s about a million percent sure that there’s no way Britta would ever forget Michelle’s face _or_ her name, but he lets that one go. Some things are better not discussed.

\---

It’s like he’s living two lives. Monday through Friday he’s simply one-seventh of a person. He’s the head and he gives speeches, he solves problems, rolls his eyes in all the right places. The study group and their issues and adventures (his issues and his adventures) take up most of his days, and finally, he’s fine with that. 

But his weekends... Well, it doesn’t take long before those belong to Britta. It starts slow, a 10pm text message and out the door by 1:30. Then he stays the night because it’s getting cold outside and Britta’s bed is warm. And they don’t spoon or cuddle or anything lame like that. Until they do, until he wakes up with his arm slung across her stomach and her back pressed into his chest. And it’s not horrible. 

Soon they don’t even have to text each other, it becomes an unspoken agreement to hang out on the weekends. Sometimes Britta will go out with Annie and Jeff will mope around until she gets home. Sometimes Abed will invite Jeff over for movie marathons and he makes an appearance but always ducks out early because Britta thinks it’s funny to text him all the filthy things she’ll do to him later.

They drive into the next town to go to dinner, never anywhere fancy or nice, because that would indicate some sort of commitment, some shade of a date. Instead they choose the grossest, divey-est places they can find and eat giant pancakes and greasy pizza and wilting salads under neon lights and questionable décor. They come up with elaborate stories of what they’ll tell the group they did over the weekend if asked. The stories get more and more ridiculous as the meal wears on (“I flew to Venice and married a gondolier.” “I did a guest stint on _Saturday Night Live_ and threw up on Lorne Michaels at the after party.”) but on Monday morning they usually grunt noncommittally when Shirley goes around and asks everyone how their weekend was.

It’s better this way, relieving tension, compartmentalizing their libidos. He’s able to enjoy her company for what it is instead of wasting all that time wondering what it would be like to sleep with her. He already knows so he can talk to her with his head and not with his dick.

Last year she was his partner in his crime and together they conspired against everyone, were the Greendale parents to their study group children. It was them versus the world and they fought in sync and behind-the-back-high-fived without looking. She was his girlfriend without actually being his girlfriend. On Greendale campus, they were JeffandBritta.

Now, it’s the opposite. Now they try not to spend too much time together in front of the group for fear of slipping. Now they exist more off campus than on. Now he cooks her breakfast on Sunday mornings and she Netflixes movies she knows he’ll like. They’re more JeffandBritta than ever before, but only in private. There’s a space between their names now, they’re spoken of and to separately. He likes to think they’re doing a good job of keeping it all quiet and private and making no one suspicious.

Until they get drunk and make out in the backseat of his car. While sitting next to Abed.

He thinks it’s all over then, that Abed will guess what’s been going on, because while the group tends to be pretty dumb and self-absorbed a lot of the time, Abed is different. Britta’s a champ, though, plays it off like it’s nothing. They’ve been arguing almost all night, over stupid things he can’t remember—maybe _The Hurt Locker_?—and maybe last year wasn’t too long ago to forget about. Abed doesn’t push the issue, doesn’t look suspicious, and they’re in the clear. Jeff squeezes her leg a little when Abed turns his head toward the window.

“That woman is a hurricane,” he tells Troy. Jeff can’t pinpoint the moment it started, but somehow it did: Troy looks down the table at Britta and there’s a… something in his eye. Like he’s just realized that Britta is a woman worth looking at. And Jeff watches Troy watch Britta walk away on unsteady legs in too-high heels and this isn’t something he’d planned on worrying about. Britta is, of course, welcome to date whoever she wants because it’s not like Jeff has any claim to her at all. But.

“Hurricanes are bad, Troy,” Jeff reminds him, because at the end of the day Jeff is nothing if not selfish.

“Do you think Abed knows anything?” she asks after they drop Troy off at Pierce’s house.

He reaches over and wraps a hand around her thigh (he can almost get it all the way around, which she claims says more about his hands than about her thighs) and strokes her leg with his thumb. “Nah, we did fine. No more drinking with the group, though.”

“Cake and party hats next time?”

He smiles before pulling his hand back. “Cake and party hats.”

\---

_Where r u? thought u were coming over?_

_Sorry I’m at Rich’s house. Be over when I’m done._

_Rich????? But u hate that guy._

_We’re working through our differences._

_Is that a code for sex?_

_What? No shut up. I’ve been jealous of him for all the wrong reasons._

_U mean because of annie._

_What about her?_

_Ur jealous because she has a crush on him. He doesn’t like her that way u know. He turned her down._

_This has nothing to do with annie._

_Ur a terrible liar even thru text. This has everything to do w/annie._

_Shut up. Me and Rich are making muffin tops. If you drop this ridiculous conversation I’ll bring you some._

_Ok that is definitely a code for sex._

_I’ll keep that in mind for the future._

_Annie told me, u know. She told me what she said to u in the bathroom._

_Well yeah. She told me she was going to ask Rich out. And she did._

_That’s not what I’m talking about and u know it. I told u from the start if u wanna be with annie you need to tell me cause I don’t wanna do this anymore if that’s the case._

_It’s not a yes or no answer._

_But it is. And if the answer isn’t no then it’s probably yes._

_What did you say to her?_

_When?_

_When she told you what she said to me. What did you say?_

_I didn’t say anything. Just nodded and tried to look sympathetic._

_You didn’t say anything about us did you?_

_Y? worried once she finds out she won’t want u anymore?_

_Shut up Britta. This has nothing to do with you. It has to do with Rich and how I thought he was the worst but he’s actually a good guy._

_Like I said I’m not doing this anymore if u want to be w/annie. So tell me now._

_What’s the difference? We are not exclusive or even together._

_I don’t care. I’m making this a condition. So u can meet it or not._

_You need to get over your Annie thing._

_So do u._

_Look, I’m leaving Rich’s now. Do you want me to come over and we can just forget about this whole thing?_

_No. Not tonight._

_So that’s it? We’re done with this?_

_Do u want to be done?_

_I asked you first. I’m in the car I can be there in 10._

_Not tonight. I have a paper to write._

_Britta._

_I’m not done. Tomorrow, ok?_

_I reserve the right to eat your muffin top. You decide if that’s a code or not._

_Ur gross. Night._

\---

It’s Britta who breaks first.

There’s a guy, apparently, she meets somewhere , a bar she goes with some friends from her old life, or maybe he works with her brother. Jeff’s hazy on the details but the point is this guy is texting Britta and Britta’s protesting but Jeff is pretty sure they went out for drinks at least once.

Jeff can go about this whole thing two different ways: he can forget about it and not let it bother him at all because she’s not his girlfriend and she’s at liberty to do whatever she wants with whoever she wants. Or, he can tell her how much it bothers him and he can bring up the topic of making their situation a little more exclusive.

But Jeff throws up his hands and says fuck it because he might as well go two for two and he takes the non-option again. And again, it doesn’t work out the way he wants because why the hell would it? Why wouldn’t he be confessing to being Britta’s boyfriend to her disgusting teenage nephew before handing him her bra? Jeff’s pretty okay with his life and where he is right now compared to where he was, but sometimes moments like this happen and he feels like he’s scraping the bottom.

He sees the non-option like this: it’s been over three months and he hasn’t slept with or kissed or texted or _seen_ any other girl. And he’s pretty sure this is the first guy she’s had any contact with. Jeff is freaked out about how much this whole thing freaks him out. He has the sudden urge to go through his phone and call some girl to take her out for drinks and sex in the backseat of his car, but all those nameless girls are gone from his contacts now. Thanks (no thanks) to Britta.

And if Britta wants to text other guys, that’s fine. That’s cool. In fact, he’s going to show her how cool it is by pushing them together because Britta _should_ text other guys. She should date them or sleep with them or whatever. She should blow Jeff off for this mystery guy and he should be totally okay with it.

(Later, Britta leaves the group to go take Marcus out for ice cream and Jeff stops short of getting down on his knees and praying that Marcus doesn’t mention the fact that Jeff referred to himself as her boyfriend. He knows Marcus won’t blab about the texts messages or the bra, but Britta can _never ever ever ever ever ever_ know about him maybe being her boyfriend.)

\---

“What’s up with you?”

She looks weird, like she wants to say something but is holding back, and that’s not something she usually does. They’ve just had sex and she’s laying on her side of the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“It’s not a big deal, but I think you should know.”

“Okay, is this going to be one of those things where you tell me you have a horrible STD and now I’m infected and going to get gross genital warts or something?”

This earns him a pillow in the face but he’s not surprised. “Shut up.”

But she doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and he starts to panic. She’s pregnant, she loves him, she’s leaving, she’s dying, she hates him, she’s done with him.

“I kissed Troy.”

“Oh.”

He deflates. He lets the news settle over him. He’d been too busy worrying about Pierce to notice that Abed had been shooting weird looks his way, as if there was something Abed knew that Jeff needed to know. But Jeff missed something because he was being an asshole. Not surprising.

“It was stupid and it didn’t mean anything. But I just… I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from Troy or Abed.”

“Okay.”

She rolls over and turns to face him. She’s biting her lip a little bit and there’s a furrow in her brow and the way she looks mirrors the way he feels. It’s obvious that this is a big deal, but not because she’s in love with Troy or not because the kiss between them meant anything. It’s a big deal because she tells him the way she would confess to cheating on a boyfriend and he feels like he’s been cheated on.

“This isn’t going to be a thing, is it?” she asks. “Because I don’t want it to be. Can we forget about it? It was dumb and it only happened because of—”

She stops herself and sighs heavily, pulling the blanket up to her chin. He knows her face, knows its frowns and lines and highs and lows. There’s something she’s never told him, something big that weighs on her and she either can’t tell him or she won’t. He’s not really offended by it because there’s plenty he’s not going to ever tell her unless she physically forces it out of him.

So he doesn’t push her. Instead, he reaches over and brushes hair out of her face, tucks it behind her ear and recalls the first time he ever did that to her. She doesn’t jump this time, though, just looks up at him curiously.

“I don’t care,” he says softly. It’s a lie, it’s a flat-out lie, because now he’ll never get the image out of his head. But he called it, didn’t he? He knew it would drive him crazy because this is the way Britta probably felt when he kissed Annie, only he’s not going to insult her by saying that wasn’t worse.

He leans in and kisses her and they have sex again, slow and intense and it’s different. Something shifts and it’s the scariest thing because she looks like she wants to cry the entire time so he knows she feels it, too. He might be in love with her and suddenly this whole thing is way too big. It’s too much. It wasn’t a good idea. It was the best idea.

She falls asleep later and he’s awake so he holds her tighter than he usually does and curses himself for doing this all backwards, because they’re never going to be able to do it right.

\---

A week after they’re over and done with, he watches as she delivers a baby and it’s like—it’s stupid and sappy but there’s a difference between a Winger Speech and what he tells her. It’s not bullshit; after the strangest Christmas of his life, after a claymation breakdown and holiday benefits, curled up in her bed, she told him about the song. (It got like this sometimes, but only after all the lights were off and it was so dark they couldn’t see each other. Sometimes, he would turn the clock face-down when she wasn’t looking so even the glare of the numbers was gone. They always worked better in the absence of light.) “I have faith in all of you guys,” she said, voice catching on something that couldn’t have possibly been a sob. “I just wanted to help Abed.”  
  
He thinks of this as she stands with him by the window, shoulders slumped and confidence gone. Abed was right about one thing: her lack of faith in herself is pretty staggering, but Jeff’s seen her underestimate herself again and again. And when she pulls the baby out, whole and healthy and ten fingers and ten toes, he’s proud of her in a weird way he’s never been before. But because he’s Jeff Winger, he can’t tell her that. He thinks maybe he’ll show her instead, but catches himself. It’s not like that anymore. They don’t do that anymore.  
  
When he gets in his car to go home that day, he watches as she walks through the parking lot with Troy and Abed, the two of them loudly replaying how awesome it was that she played such a big part in the whole thing. She’s smiling smugly and recalling how not-scared she was and she looks comfortable between them, careless, shoulders thrown back and hands articulating wildly. They stop at her car and teach her their dumb handshake before she slides into the driver’s seat and they keep walking. Jeff smiles sadly and starts his ignition. It’s the last day of classes and there’s just the end-of-the-year picnic and then it’ll be summer again. There’s something symbolic about the whole thing, the two of them ending coinciding with the end of the school year, but as Jeff drives away, Greendale in his rearview mirror, it’s not a happy ending. But it’s not a sad one, either.

 


End file.
